My spirit yearns to bring
The lost ones back; yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.

In vain!—­Thy gates deny
All passage save to those who hence depart. 
Nor to the streaming eye
Thou givest them back, nor to the broken heart.

In thy abysses hide
Beauty and excellence unknown.  To thee
Earth’s wonder and her pride
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea.

Labors of good to man,
Unpublished charity, unbroken faith;
Love, that ’midst grief began,
And grew with years, and faltered not in death.

Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered. 
With thee are silent Fame,
Forgotten Arts, and Wisdom disappeared.

Thine for a space are they. 
Yet thou shalt yield thy treasures up at last;
Thy gates shall yet give way,
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!

All that of good and fair
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time
Shall then come forth, to wear
The glory and the beauty of its prime.

They have not perished—­no! 
Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,
And features, the great soul’s apparent seat: 

All shall come back.  Each tie
Of pure affection shall be knit again: 
Alone shall Evil die,
And sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.

And then shall I behold
Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung;
And her who, still and cold,
Fills the next grave—­the beautiful and young.

D. Appleton and Company, New York.

JAMES BRYCE

(1838-)

James Bryce was born at Belfast, Ireland, of Scotch and Irish parents.  He studied at the University of Glasgow and later at Oxford, where he graduated with high honors in 1862, and where after some years of legal practice he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law in 1870.  He had already established a high reputation as an original and accurate historical scholar by his prize essay on the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ (1864), which passed through many editions, was translated into German, French, and Italian, and remains to-day a standard work and the best known work on the subject, Edward A. Freeman said on the appearance of the work that it had raised the author at once to the rank of a great historian.  It has done more than any other treatise to clarify the vague notions of historians as to the significance of the imperial idea in the Middle Ages, and its importance as a factor in German and Italian politics; and it is safe to say that there is scarcely a recent history of the period that does not show traces of its influence.  The scope of this work being juristic and philosophical, it does not admit of much historical narrative, and the style is lucid but not brilliant.  It is not in fact as a historian that Mr. Bryce is best known, but rather as a jurist, a politician, and a student of institutions.